> Sec. 171.208. CIVIL LIABILITY FOR VIOLATION OR AIDING OR ABETTING VIOLATION. (a) Any person, other than an officer or employee of a state or local governmental entity in this state, may bring a civil action against any person who: (1) performs or induces an abortion in violation of this subchapter; (2) knowingly engages in conduct that aids or abets the performance or inducement of an abortion, including paying for or reimbursing the costs of an abortion through insurance or otherwise, if the abortion is performed or induced in violation of this subchapter, regardless of whether the person knew or should have known that the abortion would be performed or induced in violation of this subchapter;

Where is the line drawn? Can you sue govt officials for providing electricity and building roads to abortion clinics?

What about Google Maps and Navigation for showing the clinic on the map and showing the directions? Google knows everything from your searches, browsing, emails, calls and texts that you're pregnant and going to get an abortion.

Can you be or act pregnant and ask people nearby for directions to the abortion place and then sue them?

Definitely need to sue the head of the DOT for not removing all roads that help people get abortions, which is all roads that lead out of the state.

Lawyers exist to distinguish logic from bullshit, and the bullshit is binding.

Most of the things you mentioned don't knowingly engage in conduct that aids or abets... Not saying this is a good law, but the line is drawn around people who know...

This law accomplishes a few things that people are missing:

1. A stark reminder that pro-lifers aren't giving up, and that 48 years of fighting later, they are stronger and getting stronger over time. And that the pro-abortion side should take notice.

2. A law that, even though it will almost inevitably fail, in the eyes of pro-lifers, several dozen children will be saved (due to inability to get abortions) and thus it is worth throwing the curveball regardless of the method.

3. A law that does a great job at getting pro-abortion women into placing blame on the Biden administration as inept and unable to stop Republicans effectively, hurting morale among his voter base, while boosting morale of Republicans to have gotten an even-temporary win after, what, 48 years of fighting? It can also be a political tactic.

4. Remember that ~50% of Republicans are women. This isn't all just angry men who like controlling women, and the pro-abortion side isn't very effective at reaching them.

This shot across the bow certainly is a good reminder for advocates of abortion access rights not to become complacent, as progress can be undone. I'm hopeful that it can act as a catalyst for advocates in the region. Extremist actions like this often create new advocates, as well as drawing external attention. There are already groups mobilizing from without and within to help Texan women who want or need an abortion, and conversely, groups hoping to take advantage of this law to target those women for what I would consider to be legal harassment. It seems like more of a gamble than you might be thinking.

Can you explain exactly what you were trying to accomplish with this comment? Government noninterference in access to abortion services provided by licensed medical practitioners meets my definition of social progress. If you feel the need to distill that down to "abortion is progress," I'm comfortable with that. Abortion is progress because it means that women have access to abortion that is less obstructed by non-medical interference.

No. Not forcing women to use black market methods of abortion is progress. They happen regardless.

Actually, its closer to 40% of republicans are women, and dropping. The anti-abortion stance of the party is probably one reason for this decline.

2. Or it will just cause the women to get abortions elsewhere, or let the kids grow up in homes that can't support them. Not to mention the extra loads of single moms (or dads). No one will be "saved".

What it's more likely to accomplish is to make Texas even more republican, and to make the US appear even more crazy to the outside world.

Adoption is an option, and you have no idea who that child could become. Steve Jobs was given up for adoption because abortion wasn’t legal at the time.

Adoption still places the parents under the duress of the medical bills up to the point of adoption, nor does it address the extreme physical duress it places the mother under.

Additionally, it does not address cases of rape, incest, pregnancies which have a high chance of killing the mother, or children with severe defects (who are likely to remain in foster homes, in the average-to-good case).

We also have no idea who the 15% of all pregnancies that end in miscarriages "could become" but we don't obsess over it because pregnancy never has been and never will be the guarantee of a fully formed independent human being. Not in humans, not in any species.

It won't be hard to find serial killers and serial pedophiles that weren't aborted because of abortion not being legal.

We can only begin to judge people as individuals once they have gained agency and self-awareness. If we're going to turn the argument into a contest of silly clichés, then how do I know whether a given fetus is going to grow up to become the next Jobs or the next Hitler?

You can't define a clump of cells as "good," "evil," or, indeed, as "human." Your own holy book makes no attempt at doing so. If you insist on enforcing your unsupported opinion at gunpoint, it can only happen at the cost of our own free will... just as seen here.

what about the billions of people already on this planet who are not in such a lucky position?

Steve Jobs was also the child of Syrian immigrants, so I’m not really sure he’s the person you should be trotting out in situations like these.

I have an inkling as to why this comment is being downvoted, but I'd love to see some actual responses to it that refute or at least engage with the claim that "adoption is an option".

> Or it will just cause the women to get abortions elsewhere

Some will, but some won't or can't, and for many of the supporters of that law, any number >=1 is a success.

> or let the kids grow up in homes that can't support them.

The general argument at that point is that life/society is punishing the parents and family for being immoral or irresponsible, which is kept separate from the goal of saving lives/enforcing punishment by preventing abortion. In other words, the quality of those lives (or lack thereof) thereafter is seen an unrelated concern.

> What it's more likely to accomplish is to make Texas even more republican

I wouldn't say it's planned but I think Republicans are quite happy with an outcome that creates more Republicans.

> several dozen children will be saved (due to inability to get abortions)

Believing something doesn't actually make it true. Mother Nature is unaffected by your conceits, even if a crowd of thousands are cheering you on, certain you can fly, your attempt to soar from the roof of the building up into the sky will result in falling to your death 'cos she doesn't give a shit.

They aren't "saving children" by forcing these pregnancies to go ahead except in the same sense they'd be "saving chickens" by enforcing more intensive factory farming techniques like debeaking and cages (also legal in Texas).

It seems to me that under the usual framework in which lawsuits are able to go ahead unburdened by judicial preflight the consequence of these lawsuits when the whole framework is found to be unconstitutional is that those who sued, and perhaps those who sponsored the bill, eat the costs of those defending the suits, such as ongoing child maintenance burden from anyone who can show they were either sued or the threat of suit caused them to go through with a pregnancy that would otherwise have been aborted.

That is, I would assume that "pro-life" groups in Texas and those who support them should expect to be paying for baby food, diapers, kid's clothes, school supplies and eventually college for at least dozens and maybe thousands of children over the expected 12-18 month life of this bill.

In the medium term, we've seen in countries where abortion is outlawed, the nature of modern technology is that the real consequences of that hit home very directly. Rich women of course "go on a trip" to have their abortion safely somewhere with legal abortion, but everybody else is obliged to take matters into their own hands, with too often deadly results.

Consider the Republic of Ireland. Its people were given a free vote on the matter and decided to amend their constitution to provide abortion, mostly in the first trimester although also in some other cases. Of course the US doesn't have a working mechanism to fix its constitution. Too bad, get one or get a fresh system of government and start from scratch.

5. A trojan horse that uses an emotionally charged issue to cultivate an appetite for "justifiable authoritarianism" and open violation of Constitutional rights.

No one is pro abortion.

I am pro-abortion.

The more abortions the better?

I believe that there are many people not getting abortions who would benefit significantly from getting abortions, so in that sense I can see more abortions as a positive thing.

This law is quite insane, and it seems entirely rational to oppose your drivers being liable simply for driving woman to a clinic.

Correct, would they also sue bus drivers, train conductors and plane pilots? Do they need pregnancy tests for anyone taking a taxi?

Not disagreeing with the law being insane, but the difference there is that cab drivers drop you off / pick you up from a specific address. The other options are mass transport which takes you to the general area only, so they have no information where you're going.

I'm curious, though, can an Uber driver be sued if they happen to take a passenger to a school and the passenger commits a mass shooting?

How would the driver even know the women is pregnant or going to get an abortion? It's not like there are clinics that ONLY do abortions.

Anyone can be sued for any infraction of the law, but to establish that a defendant is "aiding and abetting", it needs to be shown that the defendant was aware that the offense would be committed:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aiding_and_abetting#United_Sta...

However, since this law leaves the defendant liable for legal fees, it could be used to financially harm any defendant whether or not the allegation has merit.

That's for a specific provision of criminal law, but SB8 creates a civil liability even when the person did not know that the abortion being performed is illegal:

“regardless of whether the person knew or should have known that the abortion would be performed or induced in violation of this subchapter”

Ah, thanks for the correction.

> Civil liability for aiding and abetting, however, represents a very underdeveloped theory within common law tort. Courts have stated, seemingly in jest, that precedents in this area of law are "largely confined to isolated acts of adolescents in rural society."

https://scholarship.law.vanderbilt.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?a...

Looks like uncharted waters.

> How would the driver even know the women is pregnant or going to get an abortion? It's not like there are clinics that ONLY do abortions.

Ah, but that's the point. Any clinic that even thinks of performing an abortion will become a social pariah out of fear of repercussions.

See: people protesting around Planned Parenthood places.

The address can be across the street of the place you want to go, right? Same for the bus station. Not sure how taxis work in Texas, but in my country I can just tell the driver a street name and then where to stop, so the driver does not know where I am going.

Don’t be ridiculous. The whole thing about this potentially causing problems for women going in for an innocent appointment is a smokescreen, just like using edge cases to justify abortion as a whole (the way to test this is to ask whether such a person would agree to restricting abortion to just those cases). The real problem those on the left have with this law is that it is a major advance against abortion, pure and simple. The thought-paralyzing “choice” rhetoric is wearing out and losing currency. Expect more to come. Pro-life sanctuary cities and towns are also making inroads.

> Sec. 171.208. CIVIL LIABILITY FOR VIOLATION OR AIDING OR ABETTING VIOLATION. (a) Any person, other than an officer or employee of a state or local governmental entity in this state, may bring a civil action against any person who: (1) performs or induces an abortion in violation of this subchapter; (2) knowingly engages in conduct that aids or abets the performance or inducement of an abortion, including paying for or reimbursing the costs of an abortion through insurance or otherwise, if the abortion is performed or induced in violation of this subchapter, regardless of whether the person knew or should have known that the abortion would be performed or induced in violation of this subchapter;

Anyone that "knowingly engages in conduct that aids or abets the performance or inducement of an abortion" is liably under this new law. That's a very broad statement that can easily target a lot of people.

> The real problem those on the left have with this law is that it is a major advance against abortion, pure and simple.

I haven't seen anyone deny that the main issue is unreasonable restrictions on access to abortion. It's certainly valid to discuss the recklessness of the law's coercive mechanisms and their broader, negative side effects on unrelated groups.

This law is insane. So say I'm an Uber driver, woman gets into my car and I take her to Whole Foods for example. Two weeks later I get court papers saying that I'm getting sued for aiding in an abortion because the woman crossed the street and went to the abortion clinic instead of Whole Foods.

I don't see how this could possibly hold up in court.

The law is not designed to hold up in court, it is designed to use the threat of private, ideologically motivated legal process that is doomed ultimately to fail once it gets into federal court to discourage abortion providers from providing service, which is why it was also carefully crafted to evade pre-enforcement review, which would have rendered such a blatantly unconstitutional law a non-problem.

It doesn’t have to hold up in court. If you are sued and get good representation, they just drop the case. You are not entitled to attorney’s fees under the law. If you do not have good representation, they get a $10000 minimum award. Because there are thousands of officials who individually decide cases who don’t work for the state government, you can’t just sue the attorney general to stop enforcement. The law is designed so it doesn’t have to hold up in court — it’s designed so that no one has standing to challenge it or authority to be challenged on it. No recourse equals maximum enforcement.

But most Uber drivers may not have the money to defend themselves properly in court, so it is a scare tactic.

Technically speaking, the law says "knowingly engages in conduct that aids or abets the performance or inducement of an abortion."

Thus you have a case you didn't knowingly do it. I'm only speaking technically though.

Good. I live here and can't leave fast enough. This state is a mess.

I wonder if that's a partial goal of this law. Keep the state red and have those who are more liberal leave. Ensures a nice voting block for national elections and ensures local officials do not get voted out in the future.

Yes. I literally drew the Texas congressional lines in 2000 that set all this in motion and the primary goal of everything the state party does is to purge the state of people that don't vote Republican.

The Texas lines can be made so much more efficiently Republican: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lq-Y7crQo44

Whooo! Hold my beer! You literally were part of the group to draw the lines. Imagine looking back and seeing the damage it has caused in the long run. I couldn’t even imagine.

Yes. I was an intern for the ranking republican in the Texas state house (Tom craddick) at the time. I was the only person who knew how to use a computer at more than a basic level so I had my hand on the mouse as we used a brand new map program loaded with voter data. Others in the room at various points included Tom Delay, Mike Baselice (disgraced Trump consultant) Governor George W Bush, Ted Deleese, and some guy named Scott. But I'm being literal: I had my hand on the mouse and drew the map.

What software did you use back then? How did the process change when they started using software as a tool to gerrymander?

Woah woah woah hold up. You're the person who actually drew the lines?

Sorry if this is rude, but what the hell were you thinking?

I was a 22 year old republican given something important to do. I had no idea at the time that we were setting the country on an irredeemable path. It was as exciting at the time as it is shameful now.

Thanks for being so honest and being willing to reevaluate your stance given life experience.

I've told many people 5hat for all the good and bad I've done in life, the one thing that worries me if there actually is St Peter is my work on the congressional maps. Not to self agrandize (sp) and what's done is done, but the impact continues to be awful for the state and the country as a whole.

Wait what -- is this for real?

Afraid so.

I’m life long Texan and Yes that is one purpose. It’s excessively conservative to keep hold of the state. But also a reminder that our GOP state politicians are horrible Trump humpers and morally corrupt while believing they are righteous by enacting these laws. They are the worst people but unfortunately this is the reality of Texas. It’s like pockets of high diversity and rational thinkers surrounded by hoards of wackos.

I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve. - apocryphally credited to Admiral Yamamoto

With such laws in place, if I would live in US there would be no place for people like me, not blue and not red (and partly blue and partly red on various topics). This is because none of the 2 sides are perfect and many people do not fall in one side. So what is the point?

That's a failing of democracy isn't it. One optimum is to make it so the only people in your jurisdiction are those that all want the same thing. This is an argument for a strong constitution and court system and against direct democracy.

It's certainly a failing of the flawed US democracy, but fortunately there are much better ways to implement democracies.

They all have their flaws. Parliamentary democracies, for example, are susceptible to minority extreme views having massive weight if they are needed to keep a coalition in power. Direct democracies are the opposite with minority views being ignored.

edit: Also, one needs to separate the impact of the democratic system from that of the social/cultural system. A country with a very homogenous population tends to have less issues under any system of government.

Yes, but "no perfect option" doesn't imply "no better option".

I could also counter that the extra weight to "minority extreme views" is much less of an issue than most votes in most US states being meaningless because of the first past the post system on a state basis. But I don't really see this as a meaningful discussion, it's undebatable that the US system is flawed to the point where it can't be called a real democracy.

This is a law in one state out of 50 so you have a decent choice of other options.

You don't seem to understand "precedent"

You are the non-voting majority here

Abbott is up for re-election in ~one year, though.

Edit: this isn’t to say Democrats will or won’t win…but it’s also not to say Abbott won’t simply get primary’d out.

> it’s also not to say Abbott won’t simply get primary’d out

Is a newsworthy and heavy handed anti-abortion bill likely to make a republican governor more vulnerable to a primary challenge? In Texas?

I think it is likely to do so. I live and TX, and most Texans, by my measure, do not want to be told what they can and cannot do.

And if Beto will get out of the way and run for Lt Governor (where the real power is) so McCaughey can run for Governor we might turn things around

Probably a good idea not to threaten to take guns away from Texans, if you want to hold public office in Texas.

- A former Texan

Most of my family lives in Texas. They're appalled by this law. But yeah, don't go anywhere near their guns. They've literally called the cops on each other over their guns. They have assault rifles by their beds and vaults full of Zombie Apocalypse ammunition and they didn't think the sketch below was remotely funny...

https://youtu.be/QHqB2t-DGb8

As a former Lyft/Uber driver I feel positive about this, but I'm still not risking it because they're not paying me for my time in court.

Texas? Texas, USA? the land of the free... Are we going back on hunting witches?

As much as many people here won't like it, the lesson here is that there need to be strict limits on what kind of laws government is allowed to impose, period. You can't have some system where the government gets to have broad powers on things you agree with, but somehow isn't allowed to make laws about things you don't like. The only solution is being very narrow about what government can tell you to do. Personally, this law appears so ridiculous that I think existing checks and balances will have no problem rendering it irrelevant, but it should still be a warning about what government thinks it can impose on people.

That's usually what constitutions are for.

They never hunted witches in Texas. Brujas maybe, but they definitely hunted Indians.

Mexicans/Mexican Americans as well. The history of the Texas rangers is pretty sordid.

>The ban leaves enforcement up to individual citizens, enabling them to sue anyone who provides or "aids or abets" an abortion after six weeks.

i'm kind of puzzled by that extension of legal standing to everybody. I mean anybody who notices say a woman losing a bit of weight and that basically allows to file a suit, trigger discovery, and now the woman should prove that it was just a morning exercises?

It takes Neghbourhood Watch to new, medieval, heights so to speak.

> i'm kind of puzzled by that extension of legal standing to everybody

It designed to maximize the legal threat surface for anyone connected to abortion while immunizing the law against the pre-enforcement review it would have been subject to had it been state-enforced.

It’s a study in how to design a law for maximum chilling effect when you know you have an ideologically supportive Supreme Court but one with enough respect for legal precedent that it is unlikely that they’d simply uphold a 6-week abortion ban.

(Viewed another way, its a study in how to conduct an overt, brazen conspiracy against rights and deprivation of rights under color of law and test whether the federal criminal laws against those mean anything.)

A non-profit sued it's way to SCOTUS a few years ago in defense of frogs.

Absurd arguments both for and against standing are hardly new, and most don't have statutory authority behind them.

> Absurd arguments both for and against standing are hardly new

Narrowly crafting laws to avoid pre-enforcement review specifically to maximize the impact knowing that they will almost certainly be struck down as unconstitutional is, on the other hand, unusual, if perhaps not completely new (something similar may have been done before, but I am not aware of any examples.)

There's a federal law giving people the right to sue fax spammers- statutory damages of ~$500 per fax, specifically to get around freedom of speech. I think it was in the 1996 telecom law.

Not sure if it's been litigated.

> A non-profit sued it's way to SCOTUS a few years ago in defense of frogs.

Is a non-profit defending frogs meant to be self-evidently absurd?

For standing to sue? Yes

Why would a special interest group be able to sue to protect frogs, but another wouldn't be able to sue to protect unborn babies?

They're going to have some issues bringing frogs in as a party to a lawsuit (those little green bastards can't even sign the appropriate paperwork... lack of opposable thumbs) but there's nothing legally noteworthy about a non-profit group obtaining standing to sue the government about an environmental or ecological issue that is covered under statute, or under the executive branch/EPA's enforcement jurisdiction.

>that is covered under statute,

And this Texas law gives statutory standing.

Don't live in Texas so not really paying attention to this, but normally a lawsuit is filed when one has suffered a loss or harm. How does a third party claim any loss or harm giving him standing to sue in this situation?

As far as I understand that's one of the more insane parts of this law. You don't need to show you suffered any harm or loss, absolutely anyone can sue under this law.

This seems ridiculous, to the point that I feel like I'm missing something.

Does that mean that multiple people can sue a single person?

If the person proves that there was no abortion, who covers the legal fees?

Would it be possible to bait people into suing, get expensive lawyers and then provide proof that there was no abortion?

Take this with a huge grain of salt as my information is mostly indirect and I'm certainly not a lawyer. But I've read that there is actually a provision in there that prevents the legal fees for the defendant to be covered even if they win.

I suspect this will crash and burn not because it is insane, but because it's also a mess legally. But that will take time.

> Does that mean that multiple people can sue a single person?

Yes, the bill enables thousands of suits to be filed, even if frivolous, against abortion providers.

> If the person proves that there was no abortion, who covers the legal fees?

The bill explicitly covers the fees of the person bringing the suit, but provides no means for the person being sued to recover legal costs.

The combination of these two facts means that operating a clinic that even is abortion adjacent will no longer be economically viable.

If I were living in Texas and looking for ways to combat this law, I'd look into launching some sort of DDOS on its proponents by suing as many of them as frequently as possible on frivolous grounds, like if they took a teenage child to school in a neighbourhood where there is also an abortion clinic within 2 hours of walking.

Fortunately, I don't live anywhere near Texas...

It's probably using some twisted justification like saying that abortions cause harm to society as a whole, and that gives any member of society standing.

So raising a child in very suboptimal conditions is high chance of child turning criminal later on. Or parents dropping put of school to provide for the child. It can well be argued both ways.

More like "I'll be sent to hell if I don't save a soul". It's all selfishly motivated.

AFAIK that is the definition of a crime, and is enforced by the state accordingly.

Technically, there are some ways to demonstrate loss of harm. For example, imagine the father of the potential kid, not agreeing with the abortion, can make a reasonable claim.

The abortion has this ugly side, the father has zero rights. This is why I cannot agree with any side, pro-abortionists are wrong in some points, pro-lifers are wrong in some points and there is no effort to make it right, from any side. Such laws are not making it right, they are just an abuse (or farce) of the judicial system.

Does that imply that the fathers should be always financially liable for paying for the ongoing pregnancy or are you just speaking your mind without thinking of how that can affect women?

Maybe they could spend hundreds of millions of dollars on a ballot measure to overturn it. It seems they had some success in the past with this.

I don't understand business as well as I would like to, but I wonder if these companies are sensing how much trouble they'll have keeping drivers if they can become collateral damage in social oppression. I'm not used to seeing these taxi companies offer potentially a fortune's worth of services to any of their drivers, but this law is unusually reckless, even by (de facto) abortion ban standards.

Because someone submitted it and other people are commenting on it. Democracy in action.

Why isn’t it?

Yup, people could have startups on here that can be sued for aiding and abetting abortion patients and providers.

Is standing just not a thing anymore?

Why would Texas introduce this law when it helps Biden in a major way to suppress the bad Afghanistan press?

Like clockwork, the outrage ball is now in the court of the Republicans again. I guess it's up to Biden again to do something bad to keep the theater going.

The bad Afghan press will have absolutely zero impact on the midterms, much less the 2024 general. This is a MUCH more significant issue here at home. Easy decision for the press to move it to the front page.

And Abbott is a terrible politician and knows that even moderates hate him. He's don't everything he can to get every Trump voter on his side.

I'd be more supportive of this if it mattered but it doesn't. Worse, a lot of it is probably virtue signaling.

Here's what we really need. We need a blue state to pass a law, the substance of which is this:

> No person with the state of X shall possess a firearm. Any citizen but no government official may sue anyone who possesses, attempts to purchase, attempts to sell or gifts a firearm to any other person for $10,000. They may also sue anyone aiding any such person. No court shall award costs where the case is decided for the defendant.

You get the idea.

Then let's see how supportive conservatives and the Supreme Court are of the idea that this isn't an end run against constitutionality.

The most disturbing thing to me is that such a novel law wasn't stayed pending full judicial review. It really exposes what a self-serving hypocrisy "constitutional textualism" really is.

As for companies, any action less than leaving the state entirely I will view as empty posturing.

I get what you’re saying, but (a) the response to terrible laws being passed, isn’t to pass another terrible law, and (b) they don’t care about being hypocrites, like at all. They’ll just make up some garbage post hoc justification that everyone will see through, and continue doing what they want.

Might be nice to see major airlines, and airbnb (and competitors) offering free travel and accommodation to texan women traveling to other states for abortion-related procedures, and similar legal protection for participating airbnb hosts. Sure, it's partly lame for companies to take this as an opportunity for good PR, but free travel and accommodation might actually help, and it would be nice for republican texas to see how ostracized they are.